Dear Future Projects...

“Make sure that your budget is as detailed as possible in order to get as many funds approved as possible. Make sure that if you expected changes to your project that you submit the project revision form as soon as possible. Take a deep breath, if your project is a good idea, SAF and other funders are more than happy to help get your project approved with appropriate funds.”

“We were extremely thankful to the support from SAF in making this possible. Working with 4th Space was incredible, we highly valued all of their hard work in connecting us with the community and facilitating projects in the space. Their resources available to Concordians made executing our projects very enjoyable. One challenge we encountered was hosting the programming during the midterm season. “

“During our project, one of the main challenges was to spread the word and promote the events. We learned that it was important to reach out to Concordia community members but also to Montreal groups interested in sustainability and the issues we addressed at our screenings. We learned how important it is to start promotional tasks long in advance, and to combine printed material, in-person promotion, a strong social media presence, and to involve our amazing team of volunteers in the process.”

During our project, one of the main challenges was to spread the word and promote the events. We learned that it was important to reach out to Concordia community members but also to Montreal groups interested in sustainability and the issues we addressed at our screenings. We learned how important it is to start promotional tasks long in advance, and to combine printed material, in-person promotion, a strong social media presence, and to involve our amazing team of volunteers in the process.

We learned a lot over the course of this process. So in the style of Sarah Ruhl, here are some things that we learned and don’t have time to write essays about:

No one asked us to make this so we owe it to no one but ourselves and our collaborators.
But also lol jk we owe it to all the communities who we’re representing individuals from, that pressure will never ease.
A play takes four years to finish writing, and a musical takes ten, apparently (thanks Jessie).
Honest feedback is kindness (thanks Maryline for telling us that Warona said that, thanks Worona).
Plays express ideology and you have to take responsibility for that (thanks Deniz).
Everyone who’s putting their names on a performance, putting their energy into it, needs to be given a substantial voice in building its creative.
Be open to changing everything.
Be accountable: if someone brings up conflict and you realize you need to change something actually fucking change it and take responsibility for the harm that was done and don’t do it again.
Addressing conflict with someone means you care enough about yourself and them to allow both of you to learn. It’s an investment in each other and your relationship.
Take conflict seriously: find ways to continue addressing the root of the conflict / to identify when it’s happening. Don’t pretend like it never happened and was never discussed.
Take time to gather your thoughts and take time to talk things through.
Process research out loud: having conversations are really good for learning and identifying the holes in what you’ve learned.
With regards to cultural research, pulling in what resonates with this specific work felt less culturally appropriative and less essentializing of the characters’ identities than if we had simply found, for instance, forms of Ghanaian storytelling then used them cause the character is Ghanaian.
Don’t be afraid of conflict. Why do we try our best to walk around conflict? It’s ok to not agree and to feel weird some days. As long as you don’t harbour those emotions.
Work is not always distributed 50/50. Some weeks will be 60/40, or 80/20.
Everything takes time. You can’t do it all yourself.
Every job is difficult. It’s not easy to write. It’s not easy to dramaturge. It’s all hard.
Food is a good way of building community. Feed people at rehearsals and long meetings.
Breathing is necessary for everyone, not just the actors.
Remind your teammates you love them. Remind them why.
How much space are you taking up? Are you giving others room to voice their thoughts?
Giving people multiple ways to feedback (out loud, written, etc.) can be good cause not everything’s sayable in every way.
The time you spend outside of the process is just as important as the time that you spend in it. Talk to other people. Talk to other artists. See things you like. Read things you like. Talk to people you like. This will help you make better art and not hate the process or your collaborators.
You will have days where nothing seems possible.
You will have days where everything falls into place.
You will question everything. You should.
You can’t absorb the stress of the group that you want to remove it from.
Being kind to yourself also means being kind to your team.
You will be annoyed by everyone.
You will question yourself in comparison to everyone else.
You are important to the team and you are good enough.
Don’t spend too much time planning rehearsals, they won’t go as planned.
Trust yourself.
Eat. Sleep. Repeat. But actually EAT.
All the roles are important.

When working with multiple people, make space for regular check-ins in order to ensure that all the invested partners are still on the same page. Build a committed volunteer squad/group that will be your hands/eyes/ears/etc. On the day of the event take down volunteers are key; make sure you don’t neglect to have volunteers who will stay after it’s all finish to help clean up.  Do not emcee or exhibit at an event that you’re organizing because you’re going to be needed everywhere and you’re going to be too busy running around.  Have fun and celebrate yourself after!

Time management is crucial in order to complete a project on time.

Always use your education and spiritual conscience to re-shape the world into a better place. It is a challenge to get everyone on the same page, but the change starts with you.

The key is to get organized as much in advance as possible especially in terms of finances! Having fun with a strong team is the best combination. Do not be shy to get others involved and use the strengths of everyone to make your event.

Only start the making of the project AFTER you’ve secured all the funding for it instead of doing this WHILE securing funds. This, among other things, is what forced me to delay the shooting of the film which was initially planned in December 2018 for a completion date around March 2019. In the end, it didn’t really affect the quality of the project, but it was complicated to manage the whole change of schedule due to the fact that the money we raised didn’t match the initial budget we had for the film.

Remember to plan ahead and know that no matter how much you prepare for an event you will always run into last minute changes on the day of the event.

When planning an event, especially with many moving parts, scheduling and communication issues will almost always come up, sometimes at the last minute. Ultimately, no amount of planning can fully prepare for these things, so the best course of action is to keep lines of communication between you, your organization, and the people involved as open as possible!

Make sure you test out the technical arrangements of your event ahead of the day to avoid last minute and unforeseen logistical problems.

Our main lessons were, when using en-fr translator, make sure they are further away from speakers to reduce noise, make sure folks bring headphones in case of a translator only having single-ear headphones. Have camera that is live streaming, etc in the center, away from the sight line of folks in reserved seating for any accessibility needs.

A major obstacle will be to find company representatives who will be willing to come and support the cause of the project and help out the students into advancing in their careers. Minor obstacles include taking in consideration that every step of the project must be environmentally friendly, thus sustainable. In summary, all of these efforts will indeed be beneficial for the success of the event.

Affecting change is really, really hard work that needs real discipline, commitment, and collaboration while ensuring that you are not burned out. Stay grounded and do not lose sight of real objectives and what keeps you motivated.

Plan ahead! We could have been better at using reusable dishware if we had coordinated more effectively.

During our project, one of the main challenges was to spread the word and promote the events. We learned that it was important to reach out to Concordia community members but also to Montreal groups interested in sustainability and the issues we addressed at our screenings. We learned how important it is to start promotional tasks long in advance, and to combine printed material, in-person promotion, a strong social media presence, and to involve our team of volunteers in the process.

One of the problems the team encountered during this project was the fact that we were overly ambitious in our design timeline. Normally, teams build their car in three to four years, whereas we attempted to do so in two years. We were not able to produce a competition ready vehicle due to lack of time, but we will have a car by the end of the Fall of 2018. One of the main obstacles we encountered was a late finishing of the chassis due to delays from the other teams in the society. Some transferable lessons from this is that you should set your timeline and stick to it. If someone wants to push back your timeline ask them to give you at least five reasons why and how it will be more beneficial to the project rather than harmful. Towards the competition date there were also some setbacks due to lack of funding. This caused us to not be able to acquire all the material needed to manufacture certain parts causing our timeline to get setback even further. Another teachable lesson here is to always have some sort of backup funding or create a designated business team dedicated to finding funding. Despite the setbacks that challenged us throughout this project, we are still able to move forward and learn from our past mistakes and plan more for the future. Knowing everything that now know though, we will be taking all that knowledge including our design reviews with tech judges and industry professionals to heart and finishing our proof of concept by the fall of 2018 and our first iteration by June 2018.

I sent email to 65 designers and 8 academies of Montreal, and I was ready to meet all of them to have an accurate portrait of what it is happening currently in the textile designs sphere of Montreal. Even though I sent reminders, I found that only a small percentage of stakeholders answered positively for an interview meeting. My greatest disappointment was to not have an answer from quite a few academies, including the Textile Department of Concordia University.

Search for sponsors very early on, plan ahead, and be prepared for last minute changes and surprises. Double-checking every detail is very important, things easily gets lost or forgotten, make lists. Keep a dialogue with your sponsors and make sure to present them with a deadline for them to submit their promotional material, I would suggest having 2 reminders for them. We are currently working on the post-mortem, so we will have more to share with our team, and the future new members of the CFF.

As Arms, Hammers, Gears and Stars is part of a recurring project, the Cinema Politics screenings, little took place that was not planned ahead of time, and which we were not prepared to deal with. The result was a screening series that went very smoothly and without any problems. As always, the best lesson to keep in mind is to think outside of the box in order to make our events more appealing, and to contact any of the amazing on and off campus organizations for collaborations that could be beneficial for everyone.

Catering was good but the quantity was less than expected. We had chosen the caterer Avec Plaisirs because they are sustainable and environmentally conscious, however, the amount paid for the amount received was not what was expected. For future events, we will cater from the Hive, who we chose to cater our other event and believe to be a better fit in terms of quantity, sustainable choices and supporting our Concordia community. ASAC and CEED Concordia want to strive for a gender-balanced panel for our next conference. While all our speakers were amazing, we would have liked to have more female representatives on the panel. Although the panel discussion was really engaging, with the audience asking interesting questions and having a great dynamic between our speakers and participants, we would like to have more focused topic next time (i.e. African development and technology, African development and society etc.)

The event was very popular, so much so that we had to turn people away at the door because most of our tickets had been sold in advance. In the future, it may be good to allocate a number of tickets to be sold at the door on a first-come, first-served basis. We faced some significant and unforeseen delays in promotions. It took quite a long time to finalize the poster for the event. In the future, we should find a way to streamline that process. The night of the event, there was a conflict amongst attendees regarding use of the “mens” washroom by people of all genders (as organizers, we learned about this after the event). In the future, it would be important to designate the washrooms as gender neutral.

We focused most of our strategies not so much on leveraging the whole eco-friendly aspect, but more on how to target students who are very price sensitive.

Our project was a resounding success but also came out of a lot of work, which in the end did become exhausting and this exhaustion can be frustrating. If you are a small team taking on a large project, find a way to budget in compensation for your own time – this is crucial and will help keep the project sustainable.

When you organize an event or realize a project with another organization, you should be aware that communication is the key to succeed. You need to have a really good channel of communication between all the members of both organization in order to be on the same page. Furthermore, you have to apply for internal and external sponsorship at least three months before the event if you want to multiplicate the chances to receive sponsorship and to have enough time to develop a B plan if sponsor campaign doesn’t go as well as forecasted.

For the recycling and composting bins, you should draw or write clear information on cardboard, because it was not really clear for participants sometime and we cannot always have a volunteer to check everything participants throw in the bins.

I experienced resistance from my peers when I planned to make my film shoot an eco-friendly and vegan event. I was determined and with the help of my crew, we succeeded in avoiding the massive amounts of waste and cheap processed food. The main lesson during this project was to learn to persevere and not be deterred by others.